According to statistics recently released by the American Medical Association 64.8% high-risk specialists have made changes to their practice, including stopping certain services. The recent AMA survey included 4,800 physicians nationwide and looked at the differences between high and low-risk specialties as well as crisis versus non-crisis states.
More than thirty state and national medical specialty
societies took part in the survey, including high-risk specialties such as emergency
medicine, general surgery, neurosurgery, OB/GYN, orthopedic surgery and thoracic
surgery. The survey also found that 24.2% of high-risk specialists stopped providing
services, such as emergency and trauma care and delivering babies, and that 41.5% of
high-risk specialists began referring complex cases.